RoblockLLy is an educational robotics simulator designed for primary and secondary school students, whose goal is to increase their interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In the particular case of computer science, it allows developing computational thinking skills. It has been designed with ease of use in mind. This free…

The recent push to introduce coding in early childhood education has been the subject of heated debate. A lack of theoretical and empirical research devoted to understanding coding education acceptance provided the motivation for this article. As a way to engage in the debate, this article investigated kindergarten teachers' acceptance of coding…

Making students become intrinsically motivated to participate in daily class activities is an open challenge that has been addressed in different ways. In this article, we evaluate the impact of an educational innovation project, named TrivialCV, in terms of student motivation, engagement, and learning outcomes. We analyze the impact of two types…

Collaboration is an increasingly important and difficult skill for graduate engineers to develop. While universities provide some measures of collaboration ability of students on graduation, there is still some dissatisfaction with the level of preparedness of students for collaborative activity in the workplace. This paper presents a case study…

This paper presents a method to design high-quality 3D equipment for virtual laboratories. A virtual control laboratory is designed on large-scale educational purpose with merits of saving expenses for universities and can provide more opportunities for students. The proposed laboratory with more than 30 virtual instruments aims at offering…

Computer programming has for decades posed several difficulties for students of all educational levels. A number of teaching approaches have been proposed over the years but none seems to fulfil the needs of students nowadays. Students use computers mainly for playing games and the Internet and as quite a few researchers state this aspect of…

Cloud computing platforms can be highly attractive to conduct course assignments and empower students with valuable and indispensable hands-on experience. In particular, the cloud can offer teaching staff and students (whether local or remote) on-demand, elastic, dedicated, isolated, (virtually) unlimited, and easily configurable virtual machines.…

Teaching with a classroom feedback system can benefit both teaching and learning practices of interactivity. In this paper, we propose a dual-channel classroom feedback system integrated with a back-end e-Learning system. The system consists of learning agents running on the students' computers and a teaching agent running on the instructor's…

Debates have been used to develop critical thinking within teaching environments. Many learning activities are configured as working groups, which use debates to make decisions. Nevertheless, in a classroom debate, only a few students can participate; large work groups are similarly limited. Whilst the use of web tools would appear to offer a…

The synthesis of digital circuits is a basic skill in all the bachelor programmes around the ICT area of knowledge, such as Computer Science, Telecommunication Engineering or Electrical Engineering. An important hindrance in the learning process of this skill is that the existing educational tools for the design of circuits do not allow the…

Gamification is the use of game design elements in non-game settings to engage participants and encourage desired behaviors. It has been identified as a promising technique to improve students' engagement which could have a positive impact on learning. This study evaluated the learning effectiveness and engagement appeal of a gamified learning…

In the teaching of computer networks the main problem that arises is the high price and limited number of network devices the students can work with in the laboratories. Nowadays, with virtualization we can overcome this limitation. In this paper, we present a methodology that allows students to learn advanced computer network concepts through…

We present EGDA, an educational game development approach focused on the teaching of procedural knowledge using a cost-effective approach. EGDA proposes four tasks: analysis, design, implementation, and quality assurance that are subdivided in a total of 12 subtasks. One of the benefits of EGDA is that anyone can apply it to develop a game since…

The paper presents the facilities offered by the open learner model maintained in the web-based, adaptive, activity-oriented learning environment SCALE (Supporting Collaboration and Adaptation in a Learning Environment), in order to guide online students who become disengaged and support their reengagement. The open learner model (OLM_SCALE)…

In this research, we examine the design, construction, and implementation of a dynamic, easy to use, feedback mechanism for social software. The tool was integrated into an existing university's online learning community (OLC). In line with constructivist learning models and practical information systems (IS) design, the feedback system provides…